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Student's killer proclaims innocence in jail call

Posted:
08/13/2014 01:46:20 PM EDT

Updated:
08/13/2014 01:46:27 PM EDT

DOVER, N.H. (AP) - The man convicted of raping and killing a University of New Hampshire student proclaimed his innocence in a recorded prison phone call with his mother as she sympathized with the victim's family and tried to convince him to face them in court when he is sentenced to life in prison.

In a transcript of the Aug. 6 call released Wednesday, Seth Mazzaglia also complains that he doesn't want to listen to the family of Elizabeth Marriott "bitch and moan" for an hour and a half.

Mazzaglia, 31, was convicted in June of first-degree murder in the death of the 19-year-old Marriott, of Westborough, Massachusetts. Prosecutors say he killed the teen nicknamed "Lizzi" after she rejected his sexual advances and that he and his then-girlfriend, Kathryn McDonough, threw her body in a river. The body has never been found.

The call came up on Tuesday when Mazzaglia asked a judge to excuse him from the sentencing, set for Thursday. He later withdrew his request.

In the call, he tells his mother, Heather Mazzaglia, that he has asked his lawyers if he can skip the sentencing.

"I already know what everyone's gonna say there so why the hell do I have to be there? And it's a waste of my time," he says.

"Yeah, well, it's, it's for them," his mother answers.

Seth Mazzaglia says he's not feeling "particularly gracious" at the moment then tells his mother it might be different if he had been exonerated.

"If I had been found innocent of the big stuff like I should have been, and like I am, now then it might be a different story," he says.

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"Then, then I might have some sympathy."

"But I'm gonna have to sit there for an hour and a half listening to them yell and whine and bitch and moan and scream about how I'm a monster who killed someone when I'm not," he continues. "That's what I'm literally gonna have to listen to for the whole time. It isn't gonna be like, oh, you took away our chance of burying her. It's gonna be you're a monster and that's what it's gonna be over and over and over again."

A call seeking comment from Bob Marriott, the victim's father, was not immediately returned. After Tuesday's hearing, her mother, Melissa Marriott, called Mazzaglia a "selfish coward."

During the phone call, Heather Mazzaglia tells her son to think of Marriott's family.

"They're, they're in misery," she says. "I mean they're in agony. Their, their daughter is lost. I would be the same if it were you but, you know, you have to sympathize with what they've lost."

Mazzaglia was found guilty of strangling Marriott then raping her lifeless body on Oct. 9, 2012, after she rejected his sexual advances. McDonough, his ex-girlfriend, was the prosecution's star witness, testifying that Mazzaglia was the dominant partner in a sexual relationship that included bondage and discipline.

Initially, McDonough told investigators that Marriott died while the two women were engaged in rough consensual sex. After she was granted immunity from prosecution, she changed her story and said Mazzaglia killed Marriott. McDonough is serving 1 ½ to 3 years in prison for hindering prosecution.

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